to deceive themselves as to their own defects. He reposed great
confidence in me, although even within his most intimate circle of
associates, efforts had been made to check this disposition. With
generous irony, he replied to those who objected to me as a Protestant,
"Do you think I intend to make him Pope?" With his habitual unrestraint,
he communicated to me his vexations at the Court, his differences with
M. de Blacas, his impotence to do what he thought good, or to prevent
what he considered evil. He went far beyond this freedom of
conversation, by consigning to me, in his department, many matters
beyond the duties of my specific office, and would have allowed me to
assume a considerable portion of his power.[4] Thus I became associated,
during his administration, with three important circumstances, the only
ones I shall dwell on, for I am not writing the history of the time; I
merely relate what I did, saw, and thought myself, in the general course
of events.

The Charter being promulgated, and the Government settled, I suggested
to the Abbe de Montesquiou that it would be well for the King to place
before the Chambers a summary of the internal condition of France, as he
had found it, showing the results of the preceding system, and
explaining the spirit of that which he proposed to establish. The
Minister was pleased with the idea, the King adopted it, and I
immediately applied myself to the work. The Abbe de Montesquiou also
assisted; for he wrote well, and took personal pleasure in the task. On
the 12th of July, the statement was presented to the two Chambers, who
thanked the King by separate addresses. It contained, without
exaggeration or concealment, a true picture of the miseries which
unlimited and incessant war had inflicted on France, and the moral and
physical wounds which it had left to be healed,--a strange portrait,
when considered with reference to those which Napoleon, under the
Consulate and the dawning Empire, had also given to the world; and which
eulogized, with good reason at the time, the restoration of order, the
establishment of rule, the revival of prosperity, with all the excellent
effects of strong, able, and rational power. The descriptions were
equally true, although immeasurably different; and precisely in this
contrast lay the startling moral with which the history of the Imperial
despotism had just concluded. The Abbe de Montesquiou ought to have
placed the glorious edifices of the